Partitive, genitive or nominative

Estonian DOM in written use through centuries

Bibliographic Data

ID4567744
AuthorsHelle Metslang (0000-0002-6397-6532, University of Tartu, corresponding author), Külli Habicht (0000-0002-5922-9892, University of Tartu)
Year2023
Volume23
Issue1
Pages157-189
Publication date2023-02-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistic Variation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2211-6834 • E-ISSN: 2211-6842
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/lv.20016.met
OpenAlexW4210244234
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited16

The object has two variants in Estonian: partial object (in partitive, the functionally unmarked variant) and total object (in genitive or nominative). We examine the variation in object case in Estonian texts from the 17th to the 20th century, focusing on the 19th century and regarding this variation as an indicator in assessing the sociolinguistic variation of Estonian in texts. The texts of Old Literary Estonian were written by German scholars for whom Estonian was a collective interlanguage. In the 19th century the development of written Estonian came gradually into the hands of native speakers, who were surrounded by a predominantly German-language cultural space. In the Estonian of Germans the total object was overused. The 19th-century texts written by native Estonians represent an amalgam of native language and earlier interlanguage, they show fluctuations, and overuse of the partial object. By the turn of the 20th century, object case usage has stabilized

Estonian · Genitive case · German · Interlanguage · Linguistics · Nominative case · Noun · Verb · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation